For the first time, students can successfully sign up for their classes and sleep in, too.
p. Since the advent of Banner’s online course selection, early morning registration has become a ritual at the College, with thousands of bleary-eyed students waking at 8 a.m. once a semester to choose their course schedules for the next semester.
p. According to University Registrar Sallie Marchello, the early morning ritual will change this semester, with registration for next semester beginning seven hours later than usual, at 3 p.m. Marchello cited convenience — for both students and faculty — as the reason behind the time change.
p. She said that professors often ask the registrar’s office to make last-minute adjustments to the course listings, such as changing the number of seats in a given class. The number of adjustments has increased in the past, forcing Registrar employees to arrive very early to make changes.
p. Marchello said that an important concern was student convenience.
p. “Students who logged in right at 8 a.m. and encountered problems needed help immediately,” Marchello said. “And because most offices don’t open until 8 a.m. and sometimes are not fully-staffed until later, students were encountering voice-mail or longer-than-acceptable wait times in order to get resolution to their problems. We felt that if we could start later in the day, when offices were fully ramped-up and students could even resolve issues before the registration windows open, then the ‘start-up’ would be less traumatic for all involved.”
p. The time was also moved to 3 p.m. because fewer students have class during that time slot.
p. “We looked first at the course schedule, and we discovered that there are actually fewer classes beginning at 3 p.m. than there are at 8 a.m,” she said. “Any earlier in the day, and the registration windows would conflict with even more classes than at 8 a.m., which was unacceptable.”
p. The 3 p.m. starting time also corresponds to the Registrar’s office hours and optimal processing times for the College’s internet servers. Marchello acknowledged that course registration will always be a disruptive process because it takes place while some students are in class.
p. “[The registrar has] a ‘continuous improvement’ philosophy, so if a better plan emerges, we will make adjustments. If this works and solves some of the problems we were having, then we’d likely stick with it for a few cycles,” she said.
p. Marchello said that, thus far, only one student has complained about the new registration time.
